Brent Fitz Way was unveiled in Winnipeg on Friday, with the drummer and Mayor Scott Gillingham both speaking at the ceremony.
Brent Fitz first heard about the plan at a Triumph concert in May, when Winnipeg mayor Scott Gillingham approached him with the proposal. On Friday, August 7, the sign went up.
A section of Bellavista Crescent in the city’s Crestview neighbourhood is now Brent Fitz Way, and the drummer stood in front of his old street to accept it. Winnipeg rock station “92.1 CITI” has published video of his speech.
Gillingham framed the honour around the street itself rather than the résumé.
“This neighborhood helped shape a young man who dreamed big, worked hard and went on to become one of the most respected drummers in rock music,” the mayor said, describing Fitz as “a Winnipegger who has achieved remarkable things without ever forgetting where his journey began.” He also called the drummer “an inspiration,” pointing to what the honour signals to local kids about what they might aim for.
Fitz kept coming back to one word.
“It’s very overwhelming. But I will say that having this location now officially geotagged, it’s incredible, but it’s geotagged, attached to people and friends and family. That is all of you,” he said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).
Fitz added: “My whole life and career has been built on people — people business, music business — and somehow I found that to be my superpower built on this street.”
He then described the house he grew up in as the one every kid on the block ended up at.
“My parents created a beautiful, amazing template for my sister and I to grow up on this street, and our house was always the go-to street where all the kids hung out,” he continued. “We had the longest driveway, the skateboarding, the bikes, the music, all the bands that jammed there.
The rest of the speech traced the distance between that driveway and the places drumming has taken him.
“Everything I’ve enjoyed, traveling the globe — India, Russia, South America, Japan — I’ve had this unbelievable gift of playing music. And when I grew up on this street as just a person who had a love for music, we just were such a happy musical family, and all the lessons I’ve learned, I knew a little bit, but traveling the globe, I learned a lot about race, religion, culture, and things that I didn’t learn here. But most importantly, I’m bringing them back, and I’m sharing it with you all as a worldly Manitoba missionary,” Fitz said.
He closed by refusing to treat the honour as personal.
“Like I’ve always said, I love this city,” Fitz concluded. “I love everything that it’s taught me, and it’s the people and the experiences. And this street and this Miracle Mile is magical. It’s incredible how, if there’s any example, I’m just a kid from the neighborhood. I’m the same as everybody on Bellavista, and somehow I figured out how to go share that message with everybody else through music. And I’m still doing it, and I hope I’m a good servant to the city, and I’ve appreciated the gift.”
The “Manitoba missionary” line is one Fitz used earlier in the week when he spoke to CBC News Manitoba ahead of the ceremony, where he also said the whole thing did not compute and described himself as a proud little St. James kid.
He said: “I’ve said to myself for years and years, I didn’t know I was gonna be the Manitoba missionary. But as a Winnipegger, we’re kind of small-town proud, and I’ve always thought and found a way, like, ‘Well, isn’t that how we do it in Winnipeg?’ Self-deprecating, kind of without the fanfare, but quietly crushing all the time. So somehow this is a really special thing, and it’s really great for my parents. My dad’s gonna be there [at the street-naming ceremony], and my sister’s actually coming, and she’s a amazing musician. She just got home from Malaysia playing with The Commodores. How about name-dropping right there? So there’s two of us, but I will gladly, instead of ‘me’, it’s the ‘we’ for the neighborhood, and it feels great to be able to put a little geotag on the neighborhood.”
Fitz left Winnipeg in the mid-1990s for Los Angeles and has since drummed for Alice Cooper, Vince Neil, Gene Simmons, Theory Of A Deadman and The Dead Daisies, joining Slash Featuring Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators in 2010 and holding the seat in Triumph alongside Canadian acts Streetheart, Harlequin and Toque.
